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Holy fuck that's awful. I'll be honest, I just don't see how basing your entire revenue model around parents not keeping track of what their kids buy on their credit cards is a good idea. But hey, what do I know?
It works pretty well on the mobile market for almost 10 years when "microtransactions" became "freemium", gatcha Mechanics made their way into the global game market and recently got flak in regards to lootboxes. You would be shocked so see the revenue of some of these games (which are often public).
I dunno if there is much of a difference between gambling with 20,000 gems in Arena or do the same with a box of Dominaria from your local dealer.
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They have several problems and if they don't sort them Arena will just be another MTGO, trudging along without making any big dents into a highly profitable market:
a) The link between paper and digital means we can always have another caw blade or energy deck turning every single stream into the same thing over and over again. They will not be able to artificially balance things by tweaking the digital cards like HS does.
b) By and large they are aiming at two groups. The FTP and the people already using MTGO. Saying to the people already in MTGO, easy to move into Arena, just spend even more money there to play only Standard, is not going to have mass-appeal.
c) Related to b), if you are a FTP, I have done every single quest and maximized my wins since the last wipe-out, I've opened the vault once (!) and still do not have enough mythics / rares wildcards to make any of the top decks. I must say the vault was amazing when they offered mythics and we only had a couple of sets.You got so many repeats when opening packs that filling up the vault was dead easy. Now, with so many sets in there, it's becoming tediously slow to fill it.
There's still a chance to make it work, but it's beginning to look iffy.
The main problem they have is they're basing their economy on HS, which just flat out doesn't work with MTG's deck construction rules, power levels at various rarities, and giant card pool.
You need 40-50 rare+ cards to make the vast majority of standard decks. Given the size of MTG's cardpool you're almost never going to get the rare/mythics you need out of packs. And given you need 4x+ of a card before it starts filling the vault, pack progression is pretty much all you've got for filling the vault. Thus any pack is basically 4% of whatever you actually need. It's insane.
That's what you end up, if you employ idiots without any knowledge of the digital market: They simply copy & paste the rates for chase rares from other known games, without questioning, if these fit for your own game.
3% is about the industry standard for chase rares, but no other game requires you to pull 40+ cards at that (or a similar) rate. This level of incompetence in regards to pricing, odds and awareness of ones own deck structures is indeed unbelievable
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They should take a page from Yu-Gi-Oh duel links economy.
Was able to get a top tier deck there relativity fast just grinding NPC's/Online.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/...be_hosting_an/
There's another Arena AMA tonight on Reddit. It's probably not leading anywhere, given how much people are pissed about the economy, but who knows.
I'm trying for the life of me to understand who this is going to appeal to, and I can't get past this point. They're trying to create a competitive digital environment by invalidating and alienating their already existing (and deeper) digital environment. It feels like a Duels of the Planeswalkers game with a pay-to-play component.
I checked in on that AMA. As expected it was a giant pile of fuckery where the few economy questions that slipped in got deflected.
They're still in total denial. I will enjoy their tears.
I'm sure Wizards has complete control over that subreddit. Mods who vehemently insist no card board issues, bunch of accounts that perpetually deflect and say the card board is amazing. I imagine we'll see the same thing about Arena.
I think there was one exchange which was pretty telling.
Someone got through with a question about the lands moving around when you tap them and how much everyone hates it and how stupid it is.
The response was that they were working to improve AutoTap so you never had to bother tapping the lands yourself.
Like, the community clearly identifies a simple, significant problem with an easy, obvious fix... and the response is to double down on some nonsense that nobody asked for, doesn't work and is unlikely to ever work well enough in the future for true competitive play.
Also loved this exchange:
Question:
Answer:The new player experience is BAD, in my and many others opinions. With the software currently in beta, are you and the team going to look into how to make that experience better?
In my opinion, this is the biggest thing (in addition to the economy that people are surely going to ask about) that should be answered, since new player retention is the biggest thing that means the software lives or dies.
If you are going to make the new player experience better: what steps are you and the team going to do while the beta is ongoing to test this?
The most scary part about this whole disaster is that WotC/Hasbro might nuke MTGO out of the blue of Arena isn't working out, with the idea that forcing players onto the platform to make it succeed. Given their lack of vision and common sense, it's a real possibility.Right now the new player experience is right along the lines of tossing a kid in a pool and hoping they don’t drown. We’re going to be tackling this on multiple fronts. Matchmaking changes, NPE Tutorials, and quests that help guide players through their initial goals. (We do not endorse trying this at home.)
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